Rain in Streetlamp Light       

A cone of streetlamp light
comes down
to ground,
a mercury beam on a swirl
of late night rain,
an airy bight
of stored-into-sensible heat. 
It is a play
of thermals rising,
of motion spun from our sun,
from the Coriolis
effect and cooling poles.
Call the rain a sweeping
scientia, knowledge
culling
for a right of way, gliding
on gravity,
sliding
into the funny bone of
emerging
coincidence.
Could consciousness
be inherent
in being,
in the whole of the world,
pre-dating
our kind of mind?
Does it saturate the universe
like rains, infusing
dunes, coastal forests,
barrier islands, cordgrass
cobble beaches
and boulders,
rockweed garlands alive
with glisten,
and even this slab,
asphalt and mineral-sweet,
this laboratory:
our street?

First published in Homage (Ebb Tide Editions, 2024)
Homage Travel Stories & Essays | Poems | Contents at-a-Glance